Are You Selling Yourself Short By Being Indispensable?

This originally appeared on The Daily Life. Republished here with permission.

Last night my partner’s family emailed me to see if we were coming to a birthday event. “Why are they emailing me?” I asked. “Because you’ll remember and get organized, whereas they know I’ll just forget,” he said.

It’s not just birthdays—I’m the go-to person for family counseling, fridge re-stocking, remembering which friend has what dietary requirement at dinner, and when the cat’s vet day is.

When did I suddenly become so indispensable?

When I look at my friends, I see a lot of women who are indispensable in their workplaces, families, and social groups, too.

I asked a male friend if he felt the need to be indispensable. After a thoughtful pause, he replied “I guess I’ve got two priorities.” Work and family? “Number 1: doing as little unnecessary work as possible. And the other one depends on whether I’m hungry or horny.”

While my friend’s attitude hasn’t stopped him from progressing, somewhere along the line women have come to believe that if we’re indispensable, we’ll be rewarded. And we’ve given the impression that we’ll settle for compliments and approval instead of cash.

A friend of mine, a successful writer, knows this phenomenon all too well. “I get letters all the time saying ‘I love your work, now can you edit/help me write my book for free because I think you’d really enjoy it?’” Her partner, also a writer, gets fan letters and paid job offers, but no requests to work for free. “Is the assumption that he’s too busy? Or is it just that people think I’ll have endless time when it comes to being useful to others, because that’s what nice women do?”

Oddly enough, the people I feel most pressured to accommodate are other women, not just socially, but also professionally. An editor I used to freelance for told me she’d budgeted $400 for my story, “but it would be amazing if you could help me out and do it for $300.” Why would I need cash when I could be called amazing? Unsurprisingly, she never tried the “because you’re a nice person” card on my male colleagues.

“It was a shock to realize that, looking after everything as I’d been taught to, had left me a seething ball of resentment with a crap income, and chronic stress,” said my friend Marnie, an online entrepreneur. “It was only when I let everything go to hell in a hand basket that my business took off and my health improved.”

How to be utterly dispensable and happier for it?

1. Get used to not being liked.

If being liked is like crack for women, then having someone disappointed in you is like kryptonite.

“If you’re meeting everyone’s expectations, you’re not going to be meeting your own,” said Marnie. “Build up your tolerance for letting people down. Not caring if others think you’re a nice person doesn’t mean you suddenly morph into some nightmare megabitch. It means you act in accordance with your own values, and less in accordance with the values of others.”

2. Let things fall apart in small doses.

We have this fear that if we don’t do it, it won’t get done. It’s painful to let things crumble around us, but worth it for long-term gain. So a few people don’t get birthday cards for a while, and someone doesn’t have a matching pair of socks. Do you have matching socks? Yes? Then you’re all good.

“In being indispensable, we’re denying others the chance to learn and take responsibility. How do you teach people to make their own breakfast and press the buttons on the washing machine? You let them wear stinky t-shirts and go hungry for a few days,” Marnie said.

4. Be kind because you want to, not because you have to.

Being indiscriminately indispensable breeds resentment. “If you’re doing something you don’t want to do because you think it’s expected of you, it lacks grace,” said Marnie. “I retrained my family not to expect me to turn up to everything. Sure, they thought I was anti-social for a while, but now when I go to things I’m genuinely happy to see everyone, rather than faking happy and feeling like a tired, grumpy martyr.”

5. Value your own stuff—be it work, hobbies, or free time.

Won’t pursue a hobby or interest because your family/kids/partner won’t give you the time? If we wait for other people to value our interests or give us permission to follow them, we’ll be waiting forever.

Marnie saw this firsthand when she was first trying to get her business off the ground. “There was the idea that I could drop what I was doing any time someone needed me, because my business was ‘just a hobby’ and I wasn’t earning any money from it. What I lost short-term in other people’s approval, I gained in self-worth. The people in my life just had to figure their own shit out for a while, which they did. It made me realize I was more dispensable than I thought—and I’m infinitely happier for it.”

Alice Williams is an author and yoga teacher. She tutors in media writing at the University of Melbourne and blogs at Alice-williams.com. Find her on Twitter @Alicewillalice.